


touched by an angel

by starblessed



Category: Grey's Anatomy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Angels, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angels of Death, F/M, Guardian Angels, Not Really Character Death, jackson gets better, people are still alive because its canon divergence and i said so
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-09
Updated: 2018-02-13
Packaged: 2019-03-16 02:01:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 6,432
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13626213
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starblessed/pseuds/starblessed
Summary: April Kepner is not an angel.And Jackson Avery isnot dead...Technically.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> look, i'm not even in the fandom but suddenly i'm on such a japril kick that i feel like i'm gonna die, so something had to be written.
> 
> anyways, this takes place around season 9-ish, canon-era? post-boards, the plane crash happened, but lexie and mark are still alive. jackson and april have never met, for... obvious reasons.
> 
> people are gonna die, of course, but they get better.

Before he died, Jackson Avery had never really thought about how his life would end.

Death had always been there, of course, but never did it reach out and touch him. Patients would die and families would grieve; but Jackson’s own life went on. That was something he could be assured of. Death wasn’t immediate. It would always happen, but it wouldn’t happen to _him._

(Until it did, of course, but what’s the point of worrying about that beforehand?)

Of course, he is a doctor. Death is part of his daily life; maybe a plastic surgeon sees a few less casualties on the daily than, say, Dr. Shepherd, but death is always present over a doctor’s shoulder. One line from a famous Harper Avery award acceptance speech had always stood out to him: “If the grim reaper is humanity’s worst enemy, then doctors get to know their enemy _very_ well.”

Jackson’s pretty sure he wasn’t meant to take that literally.

There is a woman sitting on his windowsill, staring out at the skyline view from his penthouse apartment. Her hazel eyes are thoughtful, distant in a way that suggest she’s seeing more than passing cars and towering office buildings. Pink lips purse in a heart-shaped face. Her copper ponytail bounces whenever she moves her head. A low glow, almost like the light of a flickering candle, vibrates around her entire body.

She is beautiful. She is ethereal. She is _not supposed to be in his apartment._

Jackson stares at the intruder for a moment, frozen in his bedroom doorway. His heart hammers in his chest. At once, his lungs seem frozen. He’s not sure whether he’s been struck dumb with confusion or horror, but all he is certain of is that she shouldn’t be here now. He _knows_ who she is, of course; he’s seen her before, and he knows, deep down in the pit of his stomach. He just doesn’t want to believe it.

When he speaks, his voice is hoarse. “I’m not dead.”

The Woman Who Is Definitely Not An Angel turns her head and raises her eyebrows at him. “Oh,” she says. “I know.”

* * *

 

Maybe he always imagined he’d go out _better._ He’s not an egotist. He never needed to die in a blaze of glory, to have statues erected in his honor, to save an entire bus full of panicking orphans or rescue a city from destruction. He didn’t need his death to be legendary, or even remembered.

He just didn’t want it to be from something as stupid as getting knocked over by an ambulance.

To be fair, he didn’t see it coming. They weren't even in an ambulance bay, for god’s sake — so when the vehicle came skidding around the side of the hospital, Jackson didn’t even notice.

He noticed when it slammed into him, but that’s a given.

He was pretty sure he was fine, at first. Nothing hurt (which should have been his first indication that something was wrong). The sky was a crystal blue, wide open and stretching endlessly above him. His vision blurred, then cleared, then blurred again.

When it cleared for the second time, the fuzzy figure leaning over him sharpened into definition.

Jackson’s first thought was that he might be dead after all — because the woman above him was every inch what he’d imagine an angel would look like, if he believed in angels at all. Her pretty face was framed by bright red curls; the way her brow furrowed gave her a look of faint concern.

“It’s alright.” Her voice was light as a song, intimate as a whisper. “This was only the beginning.”

It took Jackson’s distracted mind a minute to catch up to her words. “The beginning… of what?”

She smiled. “Of eternity, of course. Eternity in heaven, with our Lord.”

That was the moment that reality hit Jackson like — forgive the turn of phrase — a speeding ambulance.

He just got run over by a vehicle. He felt his head hit the concrete. He _might_ be a little dead.

Which meant that the woman above him was…

“Oh, no,” Jackson said, bolting upright — or at least trying to. His body, with newfound stubbornness, was reluctant to cooperate with his brain’s commands. He couldn’t move, no matter how hard he tried, even as he heard the shouts of his fellow doctors around him and felt hands prodding at his face, his neck, his broken body. A part of him wasn’t sure he felt any of it at all.

As he was being lifted onto a stretcher, he felt one thing that he knew was real. A slender hand slipped into his and grasped him tight. His first instinct was to squeeze back, grateful for the comfort; then he realized what the hand was really doing. It was pulling. Pulling him forward, up and out of his own body, like you’d tug a dog on a leash. Sweetly _killing_ him.

He really did not want to die.

So, Jackson did the only thing he could, and pulled back. His hand slipped out of the angel’s own; he felt their fingers detach, and the curious, cold absence left in her wake. He settled back inside of himself, and at once, everything was real again. All the pain of injuries both internal and external crashed down on him at once, and he wondered if it wouldn’t have been easier to just go with her.

No, not at all. Fighting was never easy, but it was always the right thing to do.

As his colleagues wheeled him inside, the last thing Jackson saw was the red-haired angel, standing alone outside the hospital doors. 

* * *

 

He didn’t see her after emergency surgery to repair his subdural hematoma — a surgery that very nearly killed him. He didn’t see her during the weeks of recovery; through the headaches and memory lapses, through his mother bossing around the entire hospital like it was her job (which it is), through the growing restlessness of being trapped as a patient in the hospital he’s meant to be working in. He didn’t see her at all, and it was easy to believe she’s just been a dream.

He didn’t see her at all... until tonight.

It’s his first night out of the hospital, away from his mother’s fussing and his vitals being taken every hour. It’s his first night home, and she has _no right_ to be here.

“Who are you?” he demands, crossing his arms. If he hopes to intimidate her, he’s disappointed.

The woman sits up and smiles in a way that seems automatic; there’s little warmth behind the gesture. “My name is April Kepner,” she says (and _yes,_ her voice is the same as he remembers it), “and you’re not supposed to be alive right now.”

He stares at her for a moment, blank-faced, before he scoffs. “Okay, yeah, doesn’t really answer my question. But sorry to disappoint you.”

“I’m not disappointed!” April says quickly. “Of course not. I’m sure you’re very happy that you didn’t die. But you were supposed to.”

Maybe a part of Jackson knew _that_ all along too — knew it from the moment she took his hand. That doesn’t mean he has to acknowledge it.

“Okay,” he says slowly, keeping a cautious distance. He edges through the doorway into his room and crosses the room, so there’s an entire bed between himself and April. (A part of him feels silly for being uneasy around such a small-statured, _harmless_ looking person -- but his mind flashes back to seeing April above him as he was dying, and the whole _Angel of Death_ thing balances it out.) “So. I guess you’re here to kill me?”

“Of course not,” April says again, shaking her head. She stands up, and Jackson has to stop himself from taking a step back. “That isn’t my place.”

“What _is_ your place?”

April takes one step forward, and she is suddenly in front of him. She doesn’t clear the bed; she doesn’t move right through it. In the space of a breath, she is simply there, calm hazel eyes boring up into his.

“When the Lord’s plans don’t play out the way they should, the universe corrects itself,” April informs him. She isn’t solemn; her voice sounds pleasant, almost placating, and her face looks ready-made for a reassuring smile. It’s almost like she’s addressing a patient, Jackson realizes; this is the exact same demeanor he has when talking to one of his more risky cases. The cases where he and the patient both know that there is a solid chance they will not make it off the table.

For him, April is pretty much guaranteeing it.

Jackson draws himself up, a cool fury filling his chest. He does not want to be told that he’s going to die. He won’t look into the eyes of a being he doesn’t even believe in, who isn’t even really here, and listen to her preach about a god he doesn’t believe in. His fate is in exactly one person’s hands: his own.

“Then the universe better sit down and get patient,” he says, “because I’m not going anywhere.”

April nods. She is as accepting of this fact as a mother would be if her toddler declared the sky was raining lollipops. Finally she smiles; it is a sympathetic, condescending thing.

“Not today, Jackson. It’s alright. We’ll see each other again soon.”

She reaches out before he can move back. Phantom fingers cup his shoulder in a light squeeze.

Then just like that, April is gone.

Jackson stares at the space she left behind for a long moment, her touch still burning his bare skin. The air feels heavy and charged; breathing in, he fears, will electrocute him. For a long moment, he doesn’t breathe. Jackson just holds his breath and stares.

Finally, he allows his eyes to close, and shakes his head. Maybe she’s a hallucination, an unforeseen side effect of brain surgery; maybe he got knocked on the head harder than he thought.

He’ll talk to Shepherd about it tomorrow. Tonight, however, he’ll sleep in his own bed, ominous warnings be damned.

He’s not going to heaven without a hell of a fight.


	2. Chapter 2

The first thing Jackson realized about working at Seattle Grace Mercy West Hospital is that everybody’s got a story. Good or bad, tragic or romantic, impossible or just-barely-true; no matter who you talk to, something dramatic has happened to them, and probably within the walls of the hospital.

Mercy West, Jackson seems to recall, was not like that. When the hospital’s first merged, he’d been under the assumption that Seattle Grace just operated on its own semi-surreal plane of reality, and everyone else was getting pulled into its orbit.

After three years here, it feels safe to say he’s locked in that same gravitational pull. There’s no way out. He’s in just as deep as everybody else.

Here’s the thing about Seattle Grace, though: if you throw a stone, chances are the you’ll hit someone who’s had a near-death experience.

They’re more common as head lice around here, and twice as annoying. There was the whole shooting spree; that’s an event Jackson prefers not to think about (not just because it cost the lives of the only two other residents in his class from Mercy West). Then there was the plane crash, just barely a year ago. No one died there, thankfully, but for more than a few doctors it was a close call. Doctor Robbins lost her leg, for god’s sake, and Jackson’s own mentor was in a coma for two months. Everyone made it through that, but unscathed? Not by a long shot?

So, the day Jackson reports for his first day back on the job following his recovery, he’s just joining the crowded club of _People Who’ve Almost Died In This Cosmic Joke Of A Hospital._

At the very least, he’s got people who he can talk to. A support system. Sort of.

“Okay, so you… never saw a redhead when you were dying?”

Sloan clicks his tongue, actually giving it a good amount of thought. He has to _remember_ whether he saw any ginger angels among the army of supermodels who must have come to ring him up into the choir invisible — because he's Mark Sloan, and he’s just like that.

“Nope,” he finally declares. “No gingers. Not any cute blondes, either. Nah, my angel was a brunette.”

Jackson seizes on it anyways. “So you _did_ see an angel!”

“Sure I did,” Mark replies, and grins. “Heck, she’s right over there. I must be in heaven.”

Jackson follows his gaze, and his heart sinks. Sure, Lexie Grey might be the closest human equivalent, but she’s no angel. Lexie Grey is very much alive, quite human, and right now she’s staring at them both as if she isn’t sure whether she wants to roll her eyes or laugh.

“Don’t you two have work to do?”

The question is directed at Sloan. He shrugs, waving a dismissive hand. “Sure we do, but technically we're working right now. We’re plastic surgeons. Admiring gorgeous things is part of our jobs.”

Lexie really does roll her eyes, but she’s smiling. She can never stop smiling whenever she’s around Mark now; it’s kind of nauseating. If Jackson had any doubts about how much a near death experience could bring a couple together, he need only look at Lexie and Sloan. Before the plane crash, their on-again off-again relationship looked like it was on ice for good. Now…

Well, it’s steaming hot. Jackson wishes he were less aware of this fact. He’s walked in on his mentor and his girlfriend in the on-call room no less than four times… this week.

And he’s learned to recognize that hungry gleam in Sloan’s eyes, meaning it’s time for him to go. “Welp. Okay. Thanks for the advice, Sloan, but I’ve got a lipo in fifteen minutes, so I’d better get on it…”

“Sure, Avery, do that.” Sloan waves him off, barely interested. Nothing gets Mark Sloan, plastics superstar, to tune out faster than a mundane liposuction. (Well, Lexie Grey might be a close rival. Jackson doesn’t know what has Sloan more distracted, and isn’t sticking around to find out.)

Sloan doesn’t know a thing about angels anyway. That attempt was a bust.

It’s okay — after all, this is Seattle Grace. If he wants to find another person to question, he doesn’t have to look any farther than the elevator. 

* * *

Okay, so bringing up near-death experiences in the operating room probably isn’t the most inspiring way to begin a surgery.

“Jackson, do we really have to talk about the time I almost drowned when I’m elbow deep in a man’s stomach?”

To be fair, there’s really no great moment to mention it. _“Hey, remember that time you almost died?”_ tends to make every situation a little tense, so Jackson figured he might as well get it out of the way.

“Point taken,” he agrees, smoothly stitching up one of his preliminary incisions. That’s won’t leave a scar — not that he’d expect anything else from his own work. “But just — yes or no. You didn’t see anyone when you died? No one came to you? No blinding light, choir of sopranos… possibly a redhead?”

“No.” Meredith eyes him over the top of her surgery mask, suspicion knitting her brows. “I didn’t see anything.”

“Are you sure?”

“Jackson, I’m positive. There was nothing. I don’t remember seeing anyone, okay? No one was there.”

In his years of knowing Meredith, he’s learned what her voice sounds like when she’s seconds away from ripping someone’s head off. He does the wise thing, and drops it.

It’s only once the surgery is complete, and they’re scrubbing their hands in adjoining sinks, that Meredith asks, “Why the sudden interest?”

The only thing that telling people about April The Very Determined Angel will get him are some very worried looks, and probably a psych consult. He’s in no hurry to tell anyone what he saw (not just because he’s worried that saying her name out loud might summon her). Still, lying about April seems even harder than not talking about her at all.

“I don’t know,” he says, forcing a dismissive shrug. “You almost die, you know… it gets you thinking about things.”

That answer doesn’t sound like him at all, and Meredith knows it. She levels an even gaze at him, crooking her eyebrow. It only takes a few seconds for Jackson to break.

“Okay, fine, I think… I might have seen something. When I was dying, or about to.”

Meredith raises both brows. “On the table?”

“No, no —“ (He died on the table. That’s one thing he _really_ doesn’t like thinking about.) “No. When it happened, after I got hit… I was lying there and swore I saw someone.”

“What… kind of someone?” asks Meredith slowly. “Someone you knew?”

“Never seen her before in my life.”

“What did she look like?”

“I don’t kn—“ Jackson cuts himself off, the lie stalling in his throat. What, is there some cosmic rule that you can’t lie about angels? “I mean, she was kinda short. Bright red hair, pale —“ _Pretty,_ he has to stop himself from saying. “No one I’ve ever met.”

“Huh.” Meredith sounds thoughtful. When he glances over at her, she’s frowning down at her soapy hands. “Did she say you had a choice? Give you any ultimatums?”

“No, no —“ Now it’s Jackson’s turn to give Meredith a worried look. “She didn’t say much. Just that… this was just the beginning. And then I guess she tried to take my hand, but I wouldn’t let her. I didn’t let her pull me away. And I…” He cuts himself off, frowning, as Meredith’s eyes flicker up to his. “I lived,” he finishes dully.

“Huh. That must have been nice.”

Jackson continues to stare at her.

“When I died, I was given a decision of whether or not I wanted to stay dead by the ghosts of a bunch of people I used to know. Then I saw my dead mother, who _just_ died at that moment, by the way, so that’s how I found that out. By the time I decided I wasn’t ready to go yet, I was almost too late.” She is pleasantly silent for a moment, swiping a paper towel to dry her hands. “That’s how _I_ lived.”

Jackson forces his wide-open mouth to shut. “Oh,” he says. “Huh.”

Meredith just claps him on the shoulder, and leaves him alone.

To be fair, he probably should have known better than to ask Meredith, of all people.

* * *

A sudden interest in his friends’ morbid backstories aside, by the end of the week Jackson has pretty much managed to convince everyone that he’s fine.

Not back to normal — normality switches to a completely different playing field after a life-changing event — but he’s okay. He’s recovering well. He hasn’t had any post-operative symptoms. He doesn’t have a breakdown whenever he looks at an ambulance. Jackson is alive, and handling it pretty well.

Until he steps out the front doors of the hospital and spots a woman standing in the parking lot.

It’s almost three in the morning. The entire parking lot is shrouded beneath the pitch-black sky; but he can see her in perfect clarity. She is glowing, emanating that same ethereal light that he once stared up into against the backdrop of a cloudless sky. April is as bright as morning, and shines like a star.

There’s also a good chance she’s here to kill him, Jackson realizes, and he’s not in the mood for that.

He starts off in a beeline across the parking lot, eyes locked on her. He’s not sure what he wants to do. Yell at her? Tell her to get the hell out of his life? Just get in his car (which she _has_ to be standing right next to, of course) and drive away? For the past week he’s been looking over his shoulder, and he’s tired of it. He’s not going to be stalked by a hallucination who believes she’s an actual _angel_ —

The ground drops out from under him.

Jackson doesn’t realize what’s happened until he’s already falling. When he looks up, the entire world has been reduced to a circle, ten feet up and slipping away fast. He extends an arm, desperate to grasp anything — but there’s nothing to save him. Nothing to stop him. Nothing to catch him when he hits the ground.

The impact is like an explosion. It knocks the breath out of his lungs, and his shoulder out of its joint. In an instant, his entire side is on fire. The pain is excruciating; it’s worse than the ambulance, worse than dying. His first thought is that he’s actually fallen into hell.

When he looks up, all he can see is April’s face, staring down at him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have to credit my friend for inspiration here. I told her I need a creative way to almost kill a guy and she said, “just drop him down a manhole”.
> 
> Why is there an open manhole in the middle of a hospital parking lot? Why does so much shit happen at seattle grace idk


	3. Chapter 3

You’re _very_ lucky it wasn’t more serious,” Callie declares after setting his dislocated shoulder and putting his wrist in a splint.

“I’m not lucky,” Jackson shoots back. “I’m cursed.”

He’s dead serious (a phrase he hesitates to use, considering how literal it nearly was). Callie, being a rational human being, doesn’t realize it. Her gaze turns sympathetic; she gives his good arm a squeeze that’s probably harder than she meant it to be. “Hey, we all have runs of bad luck.”

“I’ve almost died twice in the past month.” (Jackson doesn’t mention almost drinking spoiled milk with his cereal the other day. April didn’t even show up for that, so he thinks that really was just shitty chance.) “This sort of thing doesn’t just happen.”

Callie considers this for a moment before shrugging. “I mean, you haven’t died yet. Maybe your luck is incredibly _good_.”

The only remotely good thing about it was that he managed to break his arm, not his head, when he fell twenty feet down a manhole. Why was there an open manhole in the middle of a hospital parking lot? No one can tell him that, but from the look on Hunt’s face when they pulled Jackson out, he’s sure that someone’s head is going to roll.

Three hours. He was down in the sewer for _three whole hours,_ until someone finally heard his muffled swearing and called for help. Somehow Jackson managed to get out of the whole thing relatively unscathed, if you don’t count the sprained wrist, bruised ribs, and dislocated shoulder.

“Seems like you’ve got a guardian angel watching your back, Avery,” Shepherd told him after an emergency CT revealed no signs of further head trauma.

“Yeah,” Jackson had retorted. “I’ve got something, alright.”

What he has, specifically, is April. He doesn’t _want_ her.

If this is some sick cosmic game, he’s not playing. This isn’t his fate. He deserves _better._ Jackson has always tried his damndest to be more than anyone expected of him. He was class president, prom king, kept a 4.0 grade-point average. Jackson was the one who constantly pushed himself. He never let himself settle for less than his best. Jackson Avery has too much going for him to just _die_ because some god he doesn’t even believe in wants to throw him a curveball.

He doesn’t want to die. Dammit, he’ll do everything he can to keep that from happening.

It seems obvious now. If he wants to live, he has to get rid of the person that seems to bring death to him each time.

He has to stop April Kepner.

* * *

“Can I ask you a question?”

He’s a little surprised that April showed up tonight. It’s not as if he expects to die just lying in his bed (unless life decides to play a _real_ cruel practical joke) but her presence, at this point, is more alarming than unwelcome. Which doesn’t mean she’s welcome at all, but that’s besides the point.

Fortunately for April, she doesn’t seem to care. She tears her eyes away from the window to blink at him. Surprise shines on her face, as well as a little confusion (this is the only time he’s tried to talk to her since his first night home from the hospital) but she doesn’t immediately turn him down. “Of course. What would you like to know?”

Jackson’s got a _lot_ he’d like to know, but if he’s stuck with nothing to do but interrogate the Not-Angel, he may as well get the big ones out of the way first. “Are you the one who kills me?”

April’s brows furrow, nose scrunching up. He hates himself a little for finding it charming. “I told you already,” she replies. “I’m here to escort your soul —“

“Yeah, yeah, got that part. Soul-Uber driver. Cool. But all the stuff that happened — I mean, the ambulance, then the manhole, you were there both times. Do you _make_ them happen? Like, did you pull up that manhole cover yourself?”

“Of course not,” April shoots back, and for a long time, that is all Jackson gets. She sits back down on the window ledge, hunching forward, and swings her legs. Her eyes don’t leave him. They remain rapt on his reclined figure, taking in every inch of his careless demeanor. (If Jackson has mastered one thing in his life — besides doing a lot of things _really_ well — it’s pretending he cares about none of them.)

She doesn’t look impressed. She looks worried, more than anything else, and it’s a little ironic that _she’s_ the one worrying about Jackson dying, considering that’s exactly why she’s here. “I appear when you’re about to die because I have to be ready to take you away,” April tells him, and shrugs her shoulders. “I don’t make things happen. I just show up when they do.”

Jackson props a fist behind his head and peers at her. “You know, the manhole wasn’t nice. Not even very deadly. Just cruel.”

“It would have been deadlier if you hadn’t seen me when you did.” April rolls her eyes. “Had you just walked into it without seeing, the way you were supposed to, you’d have broken your neck in the fall.”

“Sooo… I should thank you?”

“Nope. Let’s not do that.” April’s disgruntled expression is enough to make a smile tug at his lips. He forces it away as soon as it creeps up on him, but he can’t be sure she didn’t notice.

April is still watching him, calm and curious. This is all much better than the serene attitude she had on the first night. April seems more human now (even if she isn’t); more like a person. Like someone Jackson can actually work with.

“So, when you appear to me, it means I’m about to die. Is that right?” She nods. “Am I about to die right now?”

She shakes her head, leaning back against the window. “I’m here now because you escaping death again hasn’t changed anything. Fate still has plans for you, Jackson Avery. It is bigger than you. There’s no way to escape it.”

“Nope.” He pops the ‘p’ like bubblegum, turning his eyes up towards his bedroom ceiling. “But I can run from it until whatever the hell’s chasing me decides to give up.”

“The Lord doesn’t give up.”

“I’m a fast runner.” Also an atheist, but he’s not sure how relevant that is now. He might not believe in god, but if there’s a hypothetical higher power after his ass, it doesn’t seem like the time for theological debates.

“It’s not going to end,” the women who cannot be an angel tells him. “Death will keep coming for you, and sooner or later it will catch you. It will only get worse from here.”

 _Worse._ Jackson can deal with _worse._ At the very least, he can not die because of a stupid mistake on his part. He can defy death at every turn, because eventually something’s got to give, and it’s not going to be him.

Eventually, the universe will give up, and so will April.

“Does it get any more cartoonish, because there’s only so much ridiculousness I can respect. I mean, falling down a manhole? What is this? Looney Toons?”

In April’s laugh, he hears the wind chimes that used to hang outside their penthouse in the summer; the crest of waves against a sandy shore; and strains of piano music floating through a silent room. He has to ground himself to keep from being swept away by it entirely. When he looks over at her, she’s doing a poor job of keeping a smile off her face.

“That’s not funny,” she retorts, even though she just giggled at him. “Death isn’t a _joke.”_

“Gallows humor can be pretty effective.”

“Not funny,” she says again. Shaking her head. Her face is serious once more, but there’s a light in her eyes that tells Jackson she would laugh again, if wanted her to.

For a moment, he _does._ He doesn’t know why, but he wants to see April smile again; to feel that rush of memory, for nostalgia to brush its lips against his cheek. He wants it so much that he almost says something else, just because he can.

At the last minute, he stops himself. April is not a friend. She’s here to kill him. Even if she doesn’t look like it, she is an enemy.

Jackson closes his eyes instead and rolls onto his side, back to her. When he isn’t looking at April, it’s easy to forget that she’s there. “Tomorrow is another day,” he says aloud, and imagines he’s talking to himself. “If the universe wants to mess around with me, I’m game.”

April doesn’t say anything more; and after a few moments, Jackson knows that he is alone in his bedroom once again

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have made a list of creative ways to kill jackson in this fic, and intend on using them all.


	4. Chapter 4

The sprained wrist puts him out of the OR for almost a week. Although he can still see patients and write labs, he isn’t able to perform any procedures on his own. A surgeon without surgeries, his mother once told him, is like a clown without a head. (Jackson thinks clowns _with_ heads are terrifying enough, let alone headless clowns, but he lets the analogy stand as is.) For about a week, Jackson is adrift in the hospital, floating from patient to patient as he just waits to be cleared to enter the OR again.

The day finally comes, the Monday after his last near death experience. Jackson walks into work with a spring in his step, the grin on his face brighter than the starched white of his labcoat.

“Someone’s in a good mood,” Lexie observes when they pass each other stepping through the doors. “First day off the sidelines?”

“I’m back in the big leagues. Finally.” Jackson claps his hands together; he’s been itching to get them on a scalpel for weeks.

“How’s the wrist?”

“No aches, no pains. I’m all good.”

Lexie casts a smile at him, as wide as Jackson’s own. It’s good to see her happy again. For a long time, Lexie had seemed like she was adrift; even during the months that Jackson dated her, she never seemed truly herself in their relationship. There was always an edge of loneliness to her, something that made Jackson worry every time they parted ways. It hadn’t taken a rocket scientist to realize that Lexie would never have been happy with him; Jackson has eyes, after all.

As much as it hurt parting with Lexie, he can’t begrudge the happy couple that are his mentor and ex-girlfriend. Lexie and Sloan are… something else. Something Jackson’s past relationships have never held a candle to. (A part of him doubts he’ll ever get something like what they share.)

“Good for you,” Lexie replies, totally genuine. “You’re gonna rock it today.”

“Well, I’ve got a rhinoplasty at ten, and a larynx repair after lunch, so I’m gonna be busy. Sloan wants my assist on a reconstruction case later tonight.”

“Ooh, is that the lady with half her face all torn up? He mentioned that one to me!” Lexie’s eyes are bright, sharp brain doubtlessly recalling all the details just as Mark told them to her. “That’s supposed to be something to see.”

If her focus wasn’t on neuro, she’d probably want to get in on the surgery. As it is, it’s clear that she’s tempted; but she bites her lip and shakes out of it after a moment. “I’m with Shepherd today for a surgery we’ve been working on all week. This guy has two aneurysms the size of _golf balls.”_

Jackson winces. Lexie looks delighted. “Shepherd’s letting me clip them both on my own!”

“Hey, nice!”

“I want to have as many solo procedures under my belt as I can, you know? Boards are coming up in a few months, and of course I’m studying already, but if it were as easy as _remembering_ things I would have no problem. I have to _know_ them. I can’t really call myself a board-certified doctor until I…”

Lexie’s voice fades out as Jackson finds his attention drawn up — like a magnet, pulled towards the catwalk that stretches above their heads. The glare of the sun blinds him, and he blinks hard. When he opens his eyes, there is a figure standing against the rail, staring down at him.

He would recognize her anywhere at this point. _April._

“Jackson, watch out!”

Jackson flails, and just in time. His feet slide out from under him. Instead of tumbling forwards, however, he winds up slipping backwards instead, landing hard on his rear. Fire shoots up his tailbone, and he lets out a grunt of pain.

Lexie is at his side in an instant. “Oh my god,” she exclaims. “The floor! The floor was wet! The janitor was just putting down the sign, didn’t you see it?”

He looks up to see a wide-eyes janitor blinking at him, wet floor sign in hand. He’s not the only audience Jackson’s unwilling shot has attracted; the dozen-or-so people in the waiting room are gaping like he’s the hospital’s hired entertainment. That’s not even to _mention_ the murmurs coming from the nurses’ station.

Jackson’s gaze is drawn to the janitor’s cart, positioned right next to him. It’s overloaded with more than a few things, but what stands out most prominently are the sharp tools along the sides. One screwdriver, in particular, is hanging at a precarious angle. If he hadn’t looked up in time to _realize…_ if he’d fallen forwards, instead of back…

Jackson grimaces. “I’m suing this place for malpractice.”

Lexie helps him to his feet, being careful to reassure that he’s on dry ground again before letting him go. “At this point,” she says as he brushes himself off, “I think you’d have a stronger case for ‘attempted murder’.”

Oh, she has no idea.

* * *

It’s nothing short of a miracle that Jackson makes it through the rest of the day. He’s on edge every second. Every flash of ginger from the corner of his eye sends his pulse racing; when a redheaded nurse steps up behind him to ask a question, he almost has a heart attack.

It’s not just jumpiness, but something worse, something less excusable. He spends his entire day paranoid, and that makes him grouchy.

“Geez, what bit you and died?” Cristina demands during lunch, after Jackson snaps at her over an ill-timed “dead man walking” quip. Jackson fixes her with a glare that soon turns weary.

He isn’t angry at anyone. He’s just _fed up,_ dammit, and exhausted.

He doesn’t try to justify himself. Instead, he just sighs, and offers Cristina a few of his fries as apology. She takes them, and the conflict is happily forgotten.

At least his surgeries go well. Most of them are pretty routine, things he can do on his own with ease. The facial reconstruction surgery is something to see, though. He works on the upper forehead and eyes, while Sloan takes care of the lower half of the woman’s face. By the time they’re done, Mrs. Cassidy is left looking… well, still pretty gruesome, but once she’s all healed up she’ll hardly be able to tell she ever needed surgery.

“Nice job, Avery,” Sloan praises as they scrub hands outside of the OR. “You probably could have handled that yourself.”

Jackson can’t help grinning. “Yeah, really?”

“Well, maybe not as flawless as me, but sure. You could handle it.”

This is high praise from his friend and mentor. Jackson basks in it for as long as he’ll allow himself to — and it definitely makes his day a little better.

Until he steps into the empty elevator, and realizes he’s not alone two seconds after the doors close.

“Oh, _come on,”_ he groans. He’s never even been afraid of elevators. Now he’s going to die in one?

He turns to look at April, exasperation written all over his face. To her credit, she doesn’t look any happier to be here. She almost looks like she belongs here, under the brightly lit fluorescents of the elevator. She doesn’t stand out nearly as much as she does in Jackson’s apartment. His gaze is drawn to her anyways.

“Stop looking at me like that,” she huffs after a moment. “I’m not here to kill you.”

“What, is this another warning?”

“Yes,” she replies, looking disgruntled. “It’s standard procedure.”

“Because I just won't get the message and die already, huh?”

She frowns. “Don’t put it like that. Like death is a bad thing.”

Jackson has spent his entire day on edge. He really doesn’t feel like being lectured about how death is a _wonderful experience, the beginning of eternity in heaven,_ all the stuff April seems so fond of preaching. He’s listened to it before; he’s okay not hearing it again.

So, instead of letting April go on, he laughs out loud and slaps the button for the first floor. She cuts herself off with a sigh, stepping up to stand next to him. This close to her, he is able to feel the heat of her arm against his own (how can April be so _warm_ if she’s not truly here?).

For a moment, they are silent. The absence of sound stretches between them like a rubber band, growing more taut with each second that passes. Jackson glances over at her; she has her eyes trained up, watching the elevator floors tick down. When they finally reach the lobby, the doors chime, and this is the sound that finally shatters the barrier of silence.

“So,” says Jackson, “you feel like getting a drink?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> just ask out your guardian angel, just ask out the freakin angel, just DO IT because you’re Jackson freakin Avery


End file.
